Funding Friday: The Merry Merkle Tree

Our friends at TrueBit are trying to raise $250k to support Covenant House Toronto.

They have built a virtual Christmas tree and are accepting donations in Ethereum here.

The Gotham Gal and I have donated 5.5 ETH. Our donation may take a few days to show up on the leaderboard.

I am hoping those of you out there who are holding a lot of ETH might part with a little bit of it to help a great cause.

You can do that here.

#Uncategorized

Comments (Archived):

  1. William Mougayar

    That’s a great cause. Will help.it’s freezing now in the Toronto streets, -15C. Some parts of Canada are colder than the North Pole this week!

    1. JamesHRH

      Apparently, some parts are colder than places on Mars.Character building.80F here in the Coachella Valley, where CDN license plates go 1:4 w Cali plates!!!

    2. awaldstein

      its damn cold in ny today.

      1. William Mougayar

        Yup. Cold is a relative thing 🙂

        1. awaldstein

          feels absolute when you are in it though for certain.peeling off a mountain of clothes just to walk and get a glass of wine to feel the comfort of friends and banter.

    3. Rick Mason

      It’s been -22C here in Michigan and worse if you figure in the wind chill.

      1. JamesHRH

        That’s only just below 0F. However, when the wind blows around the Great Lakes, it can cut you in half.

        1. Rick Mason

          Well then I did the conversion wrong, it was -8 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind chill got it below that. Even for Michigan that’s darn cold.

          1. JamesHRH

            No, you did good. -8 is just below and yep, that’s still pretty cold.

      2. William Mougayar

        Exactly.

    4. Vasudev Ram

      Wow. I’ve read that it can get down to -40 C (which is also -40 F, as it happens), in many northern parts like Canada and Alaska. https://uploads.disquscdn.c

      1. JamesHRH

        My personal best is -48F in Unity Saskatchewan ( not that far north really ) in December 1989.You know It’s cold when the sun is out, there is no wind and it hurts to breath without covering your mouth w a scarf.

        1. Vasudev Ram

          Deadly. A ex-colleague from the US told us that he got once frostbitten on his face as a kid (in Minnesota) and even now (in his forties or so) that part of his face hurts now and then.

          1. JamesHRH

            The tops of both my ears have no sensation, I froze them so often as a dumb kid.

          2. Vasudev Ram

            Wow. Bad.

    5. JLM

      .It will be 60F tomorrow in Austin By God Texas, but it is going to snow on Monday.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. William Mougayar

        Sorry to hear about that.

    6. creative group

      William Mougayar:you are a great person to ask the following question to.You have the resources to live full time in the best year round locations with the best weather, why do you continue to choose a cold ❄ weather climate location?

      1. William Mougayar

        Just got back from much travel. So it’s good to be home no matter what the temperature is :)Stay tuned for 2018.

        1. Brandon G. Donnelly

          because toronto is an amazing city 🙂

  2. JamesHRH

    This is awesome, in that it showcases the best of mankind while proving my belief that crypto will never be mainstream. I feel it’s incredibly generous of you to point out that your ETH transaction has occurred, but actually has not occurred, or may never occur ( where is the Disqus setting for ‘ mild, gentle sarcasm font ‘ ? ).I like to think of it as – If a tree falling job is purchased on the Blockchain, does it make any noise when the miners stop mining and the tree doesn’t fall ( or does ) and no one knows if things happened or people didn’t get paid?I am familiar with Covenant House. It is a great service and well worth your support.Have a great Friday.

  3. LE

    Interesting note regarding this:The wallet only accepts Ether or ERC20 Tokens. Donations made via the Ethereum wallet will not be issued a charitable tax receipt. Donations made by credit card will receive a charitable tax receipt from Covenant House Toronto.For US tax purposes this is not deductible unless you are using it to offset income from Canada (and only a few countries Canada being one of them) qualify even for this possibility.https://www.irs.gov/publicahttps://www.irs.gov/pub/irs…Does this matter irl? I mean you could also take your chance and hope not to be audited. The problem is charitable contributions would generally be more of a red flag than if you had paid $100 at the office supply store for personal items.What I just spent a few hours on this morning was trying to determine the different between the ‘clang of the mailbox’ rule with regards to expense payments and how it applies to bills paid by online banking. [1][1] My conclusion is that it’s not legit but you do have a leg to stand on in an audit because there doesn’t appear to be any specific ruling by the IRS that it isn’t allowed (even though by the reading of the appropriate document it appears that way). Forgiveness v. permission basically.

  4. jason wright

    why only ETH? seems odd to not accept BTC, UNLESS THEY ARE SPECULATING THAT THE PRICE OF ETH HAS A LOT OF HEADROOM. even good causes have calculation at their heart.

    1. awaldstein

      They are an Ethereum shop and I would do the same.There are a zillion places to buy one the another and this offers no friction to participate at all.Smart move and I would expect it.

      1. jason wright

        if a person doesn’t have ETH and wants to contribute they have to either convert to ETH from BTC or buy ETH direct. either way the pressure on ETH’s price is up. I feel i sense that homelessness is now being used as a commodity to jack the price of one crypto over others, which seems just a little bit unethical. of course this critique will be critiqued because this is a good cause and we should not look beyond it to examine other motivations. ‘good’ shielding of a questionable strategy for personal enrichment. one wonders why they are homeless, and I think I see the macro economic dynamic at play here in a human behaviour that contributes to it. the rich getting ever richer. the concentration of wealth becoming ever greater. these people are on the street because modern economics is morally bankrupt.I worked in a social welfare office for 5 years in my formative years. I saw the consequences of the economic system at very close quarters every working day. giving and philanthropy are fig leaves to justify the unjustifiable. the entire economic system is morally reprehensible. what is needed (and will never be agreed to by the rich) is the wholesale redistribution of wealth. projects like Covenant should not need to exist. they are a consequence of gross inequality. taxes should be levied and distributed to cover such essential human needs, although the property magnates of Toronto might not be quite so keen on the idea. Greed.

        1. awaldstein

          any way that we start to address the impossible issue of homelessness is a good one in my opinion as the answer is beyond the pale even though there are some urban VC funds looking for a way to invest in solutions.re your view of activity as inflation I’m not there with you. inflation is a positive aspect within bounds and in essence the model and one of the things that offers the most hope for funding solutions to create change out of a crypto driven model.

          1. jason wright

            I’ve done my 10,000 hours working with those in poverty and on the very crumbling margins of the economic system.what we need is a token that is as widely distributed as possible to stabilise its price, which will then make it a viable medium of exchange around which a multitude of applications can flourish, thus weakening the existing pernicious fiat system’s all embracing power by creating an alternative economic system that can stand independent of the traditional banking system.p.s. it isn’t Ripple.

          2. awaldstein

            i applaud your good intent.don’t at all understand how this token economics you presume works. counterintuitive to me honestly. crypto is already an independent system and no idea how widely distributed though traded makes any difference to inflation.in

  5. Evan Van Ness

    They also just announced that they’re raising 5,000 for a Syrian refugee family to get on their feet in Canada. https://merrymerkle.com/ref

  6. Adam Parish

    Another awesome use case that not only benefits society but visually debunks the myth that crypto is opaque and nefarious.

  7. LIAD

    i remember when going deep on bitcoin back in the day took me to read about, and get my head around merkle trees. was delightful. ingenious simplicity, profound results. #tech #rocks

  8. JamesHRH

    Here in Coachella Valley the Desert Rat depth of locality scale awards points like this:Some of my best friends are:- 1 pt : from SoCal- 2 pts: from NoCal- 3 pts: from Seattle- 4 pts: gay- 5 pts and the win: Canadian